Festival highlights Sheffield’s leading medical research

Embarrassing Bodies’ presenter Dr Dawn Harper is among the top experts playing a key part in a six day Life Festival starting at Sheffield University on Monday.

World-class medics and scientists are opening their laboratory doors to give members of the public the unique opportunity to witness ground-breaking research which is making a difference to people across the world.

The free event is a celebration of the work that the university’s medicine, dentistry and health researchers are doing to improve lives with their work on cancer, Parkinson’s, dementia and childhood diseases.

It will include free health checks, interactive lab demonstrations and entertaining lectures on everything from how your heart works to what happens if you don’t get enough sleep.

Dr Harper will be giving audiences a fascinating insight into the medical world and her hit Channel Four series.

On Tuesday visitors to the Royal Hallamshire Hospital will be given the chance to extract DNA from strawberries, test whether bottled water really does taste better than tap water and measure the density of bones.

Budding historians can step back in time to 1828 on Thursday to discover the history of the university’s Medical School.

And on Saturday children are invited to bring their most-loved teddy bear for a full check-up with one of the university’s Teddy Doctors. The hospital will be open from 12pm until 4pm in Barker’s Pool.